Abstract

“We will employ the best engravers for the figures” – Draughtsmen and Engravers of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1700–1809. – Although barely mentioned in accounts of its history of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, draughtsmen and engravers were, from the very inception, essential collaborators. Based on previously overlooked archival sources, this paper investigates the strategies that scientists used to select the most appropriate candidates during the first hundred years of the academy's existence. These included: the engaging of artists already known to the scientists or those who had been recommendaded to them; maintaining long-term relationships with a number of artists, and later with their offspring ; in 1768 this strategy culminated in the creation of a permanent position for one academic draughtsman; and hiring draughtsmen who specialised in the subject matter in question, which entailed, for example, employing different people to carry out anatomical and botanical illustrations